On Saturday, CNN terrorism analyst and former Obama DHS official Juliette Kayyem demanded everyone “stop looking” for a motive in Charlie Kirk’s assassination because we may never know while asking, “Who cares?” On Tuesday, Utah County D.A. Jeff Gray revealed text messages from Kirk’s alleged assassin saying he “had enough of his hatred. Some hate can’t be negotiated out.” Later, on Tuesday's The Arena with Kasie Hunt, Kayyem doubled down on stupid and claimed, “The violence piece is still inexplicable to me.”
Hunt asked, “So, what do you make of this in terms of radicalization, what it says, if anything? And there's also all this information from what was on the casings that was clearly internet-based radicalization.”
Kayyem responded by asking and answering her own rhetorical question, “Right. And it's a combination of many things. So, we've been hearing for the last couple of days, sort of this left-leaning turn, and we'll—by Robinson—we’ll learn what the details of that are in terms of, you know, was it related to the roommate who was a lover? What is not answerable yet.
To reiterate, the shooter claimed he shot Kirk because “some hate can’t be negotiated out.” Whether it was specifically related to the lover or just some generic pro-trans does not matter. It was ideological. It’s not rocket science.
Nevertheless, Kayyem almost set off the fire alarm with her straw man burning:
And I know everyone wants to put a sort of left-wing, right-wing on everything, is the violence part. Lots of people change their minds about politics. Lots of left people become super right. Right people become left. That—the violence piece is still inexplicable to me. I do not buy the argument, you know, that is being sold by some partisans that there's something about the left-wing movement that is inherently violent, any more than I believe that about the right-wing. We have to take left, right out in this. It may be that left progressive trans rights animated his politics—his greater interest in politics, as we've seen.
We are talking about whether Kirk’s assassin had a political motive, not whether “some partisans” have accurate beliefs about the left’s relationship with violence. However, Kayyem continued to seek to obfuscate:
But it does not explain the violence because, remember, lots of partisans, most partisans, are not violent. And so we're still looking for that. And that's where, what you said about this other stew that he's a part of, right? The gaming world, the sort of ironic cynicism that he's using to talk to folks, even as Evan said, this sort of weirdness about being focused on whether he's in trouble with his grandfather, he just committed a political assassination.
We are also not talking about “lots of partisans.” We are talking about this one, some people just choose evil, and Kayyem keeps trying to either rewrite what we know about him or change the subject.
She concluded, “All of that may help us understand again how politics leads to violence. Lots of politics, lots of rough-and-tumble politics in this country. And that is what may be unanswerable, but is something that people like me, who want to stop political violence on the right and the left, look at in terms of minimizing that aspect of American politics right now.”
If the shooter was radicalized on the internet, that is the “how,” not the “why.” It is plain that this guy murdered Kirk because of his politics, and CNN’s terrorism analyst is doing everything in her power to avoid saying so because she doesn’t want to arrive at any potentially inconvenient conclusions.
Here is a transcript for the September 16 show:
CNN The Arena with Kasie Hunt
9/16/2025
4:10 PM ET
KASIE HUNT: So, what do you make of this in terms of radicalization, what it says, if anything? And there's also all this information from what was on the casings that was clearly internet-based radicalization.
JULIETTE KAYYEM: Right. And it's a combination of many things. So, we've been hearing for the last couple of days, sort of this left-leaning turn, and we'll—by Robinson— we’ll learn what the details of that are in terms of, you know, was it related to the roommate who was a lover?
What is not answerable yet. And I know everyone wants to put a sort of left-wing, right-wing on everything, is the violence part. Lots of people change their minds about politics. Lots of left people become super right. Right people become left. That—the violence piece is still inexplicable to me. I do not buy the argument, you know, that is being sold by some partisans that there's something about the left-wing movement that is inherently violent, any more than I believe that about the right-wing. We have to take left, right out in this. It may be that left progressive trans rights animated his political—his greater interest in politics, as we've seen.
But it does not explain the violence because, remember, lots of partisans, most partisans, are not violent. And so we're still looking for that. And that's where, what you said about this other stew that he's a part of, right? The gaming world, the sort of ironic cynicism that he's using to talk to folks, even as Evan said, this sort of weirdness about being focused on whether he's in trouble with his grandfather, he just committed a political assassination.
All of that may help us understand again how politics leads to violence. Lots of politics, lots of rough-and-tumble politics in this country. And that is what may be unanswerable, but is something that people like me, who want to stop political violence on the right and the left, look at in terms of minimizing that aspect of American politics right now.
